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When she sees him again, she thinks she might kill him.
Privately, desperately, she thinks she might love him.
In the end, her mights are not so different.
Their elevator sojourn is disquieting.
He's striding after her, wrapping one hand around her wrist, drawing her body to his. She hadn't thought him capable of such anger. She curls her lip, glaring up at him. "Let go.”
"I don't think so, Katsuragi." His voice is low, sensual, suffused with a challenge. "Tell the truth.”
"You want the truth?" He doesn't loosen his hold on her; she'll have a mark on her arm tomorrow. "Fine." The corner of his mouth lifts in that achingly familiar fashion. She wants to knock the breath from his lungs. The anger of it burns her, red-hot and ruthless.
She rises on her toes and grabs his collar with both hands, kissing him harshly, dispassionately. Pull away, she thinks. Pull away and leave.
Kaji doesn't resist the kiss, ever-so-gently curving his fingers around her waist, pressing into her with all his heady warmth. The smell of him, earthy and masculine. Her resolve weakens and he's there, softening the kiss into something slow and tender and gorgeous. All those years ago, he caught her in his hands. She should have known how easily he would trap her again.
She tells herself that some things are inevitable.
That, at least, is the truth.
She drinks too much, but Kaji has never minded. His vices are subtle in comparison.
Misato can’t pinpoint when it began again, his taking care of her.
She peels her face away from his chest, groaning. She is slick with sweat, dizzy, but mostly furious with herself. She'd hoped to deceive him — hoped the illusion of adulthood would hold fast. "M'gonna throw up," she says to him, watching the look of faint amusement on his face fade to apprehension. “Bathroom."
He grips her elbows, steering her body down the hall. She leans against him, savoring his warmth. "Such an idiot," she mumbles.
Kaji raises a brow. She doesn’t bother correcting him.
After, when he's scraping sweaty strands of hair away from her face and she's leaning against the cool porcelain of the toilet, flush-cheeked and humiliated, he says, "Katsuragi, you haven't changed at all.”
His words are a knife, thin and supple but aimed for the heart. But he's stroking the sides of her hair, and she closes her eyes, feeling childlike. Hold me, she wants to tell him. Father, lover, hold me. "Maybe I haven't changed," she says listlessly. "And maybe I am completely different. You wouldn't know.”
"Ah, but you're here with me." He kneels, taking her into his arms, then says, "I think you’re no different.”
She pokes his chest with an accusatory finger. "You want me to say that I miss you.”
His breath is warm in her ear. "And do you?”
"I wanted you out of my life then," she says, glancing up at his carefully blank countenance. "I'd hoped not to see you again.”
There's a flash of emotion in his eyes. Then his face shutters, impassive again.
He carries her to the bed anyway. Pulls off her shoes and socks, sets a glass of water on her bedside table, tugs the sheets up around her, kisses her forehead. She reaches for his hand as he moves off the bed. He stills, lets her grasp his palm. His hand is so large that her fingers can barely wrap around him.
"Kaji-kun," she murmurs, too tired to keep up the pretense. "Thank you. For all the... all the times I let you down. For all the times you stayed.”
She feels him shift, let go of her hand. Then he's rustling, moving around, discarding something. Exhaling. He lands beside her on the mattress with a flat thud, throwing an arm across his face. "Go to sleep, Misato.”
He so rarely uses her first name.
She obeys.
In the morning, she wakes tangled in him.
He removed his shirt in the night, she realizes, and his body is warm against hers. His heavy, muscular leg is draped over her hip, pinning her to the bed, and one hand is casually cupping her breast through her tank top. Her nipples are peaked, aching with awareness at his proximity. He smells woodsy, clean and masculine, cedar with a hint of sweat and salt. He's buried his face in her hair, his other hand gripping her waist, and she is thoroughly, completely tangled in him.
She remembers this. How could she not?
A flash of white, a star-sun white, a cosmic white. A crumpled photograph, sepia-toned, of a laughing girl with blue-black hair and a grinning, unkempt boy. An apple peel, patchy and thin, curving around the glint of a knife. Cooked fish, white rice. Discordant laughter. Little nuisances, minute memories.
Misato presses a kiss to his Adam's apple. The weakness, again. How many women have roused themselves in his arms like this? She hasn't had anyone since him. Hasn’t needed to.
She feels Kaji smile, a quiet vibration against her skin. He felt the kiss, then. She should be embarrassed, but she is too content to move. "Morning," he says, his voice deep and thick with sleep. He makes no attempt to move his hand into a polite position, squeezing her breast possessively. "You let me sleep like this?”
She rolls her eyes. The domestic intimacy of their conversation — their position — is unnerving. She can feel his hardness prodding her thigh casually. "I didn't let you do anything. You groped me in my sleep.”
"And look how much you like it." He thumbs her nipple, pinches it lightly. Arousal sparks between her thighs. She thinks of how much she would hate Shinji or Asuka to come running down the hall right at this very moment.
Kaji runs his tongue across the shell of her ear and goosebumps prickle along her arms. She twists in his hold, rubbing against his hard-on. He lets out a breath. "Don't start something you can't finish, Katsuragi.”
She extricates herself from his arms. "There's children in this house.”
Kaji laughs, his bare chest striped with the luminous golden light filtering through the blinds. "Hasn't stopped you.”
Frowning, she pushes off from the bed, tugging her top lower in a failed attempt to cover herself. “Maybe it should.”
He props his hands behind his head and watches lazily as she pulls on underwear and a pair of shorts. Misato resists the urge to show off for him. Kaji would gladly indulge her until her pathetic, obsessive neuroses are set to rest. He's a caretaker, that one.
He gives. She takes and takes.
Misato sticks her tongue out at him as she pulls a sweater over her head. "Stop looking at me.”
Kaji doesn't say anything in response. His eyes are steady and warm. Eventually he rises, walks over to her and smooths his hands over her scalp. She lets him touch her hair, hold her face. Closes her eyes and leans into his hand. Let me have this, she thinks. Let me have you. But the thought is futile. She lets it dissipate in the warm morning air and steps away from him.
She imagines herself as a bird at his window. Slight, trembling. A denizen of the sky, so easily swayed by hands that beckon with seed. He’s a shaky pilot and she's a flight risk. Neither of them are much good at landings.
There's a shame in existing like this. In the spaces between. Never open, never true. But Ryoji Kaji has never felt that shame. He’ll die for her in secret, and gladly.
"You know I..." She cannot say it. Not now, not then. ”You know.”
He stands there, bemused, rumpled from sleep, so handsome that she wants to sink herself into him again. "I don't think I do know, Katsuragi.”
"You know, I hated that apartment," she says. “Do you remember the things we said to each other back then?”
He blinks, taken aback. “What—"
"Those dreams... those feelings... they don’t translate anymore." She crosses her arms over her chest. “You know that we can't be together. Not really.”
Kaji doesn't react with alarm or surprise. He collects his jacket from the floor, then says, "You know I'll take what you're willing to give.”
She wants to ask if he doesn't believe that he deserves more.
She thinks about the college years, of course she does; they're an ingrowth, a thing she can't quite shake.
She thinks about the modest apartment that she swore she hated. A place to rest her head. The boy who planted flowers in the damp soil outside their window. A place to rest her heart.
Where she peeled off her too-small shoes; threw herself into his arms, kissing his face, kissing his mouth and nose and cheeks and ears and neck until he deposited her onto the bed, laughing and pink; drank cold soda from an unwashed glass, swapping her spit with his; sucked him off by the window because that was precisely the point, wasn't it, public or private gratification, she'd give it up to him anyway; let him shatter her on the kitchen counter, in the shower, on the floor with the advent of carpet burn; cooked for him; held his hand in the street; watched him rewrite her notes for her; cried and huddled into him at night; shook out her rusty blue umbrella on him; licked water droplets from his skin; let him put cold wet hands under her bra; let him hoist her up on the counter; let him love her; made him leave her.
"When I realized I'd found my father in the man I was dating..."
She thinks of her younger self, hippie and pretty and chatty. Of Kaji.
She’d been annoyed by him. By his easy good looks and self-assurance. So boyish and irritating, like a little puppy. Always nudging her, biting at her. Making her laugh, making her lose her cool, making her happy. Making her the happiest she’d ever be.
Ritsuko had been coolly amused by them. Ritsuko, slim and blonde and poised, the only half-intelligent one.
Happiness has never been particularly useful. But she's fond of those sticky, ridiculous, randy days. Doomed days. She was quiet, then she wouldn't stop talking; she was repressed, then she couldn't stop sleeping with Kaji. For the first time, she was seen.
After eight years and then some, it's still a little like that. Like Kaji has never quite been able to look away from her.
Sex has never been the difficult part for them.
The tilt of his body, leaning down. The arch of his hips, grazing her pelvis, stroking the length of her ribs with those rough hands. The world is so narrow. His steady dark eyes and his crooked mouth and the rest of it — the rest, the quiet, the solace. She thinks of the cool black night, the impassive, impenetrable darkness which stretches, aching, wraps itself around their bed, collapses. She sees herself reflected in him. Surging to meet his kiss, pulling him inside the damp fire of her thighs.
His low voice, blazing through her. Always the ache for him pulled taut across her body. Always an unsettling peace. She does not really know how to be at peace.
But Kaji does.
Don’t be a stranger, she’d told him after the fact, his gaze blank with despair or relief or some defeatist mixture of both. He wasn’t a stranger, after all, just a place to rest her head. She didn’t tell him that she’d rather lie on the highway, between the cars and concrete, with the wind and fear. He knew.
She thinks he might yet teach her peace. Slowly, a bit at a time. Don't kid yourself, Katsuragi. He can only give her so much.
She draws herself back into the moment, grazing her teeth over his collarbone, sucking lightly. She feels his breath catch. But she doesn’t know embarrassment anymore, not with him. She clutches the smooth muscle of his shoulders, urging him closer, wanting him, craving him, even when he's so deep inside her they might as well be fused. The sheets are wet. The pleasure of it is almost too much — tears spring to the corners of her eyes. He runs his thumb across her cheekbone, once, twice. She shivers, lost, enamored. His gaze is almost violent with implication.
She averts her eyes.
"Katsuragi," Kaji says, his voice hoarse but tender. "Don't look so sad when I'm having sex with you.”
Misato sniffs, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in the crook of his shoulder. "It's just that the sex is so bad.”
He laughs, the sound of it warm and unassuming, then rolls his hips languidly. She gasps, clenches around him. He pushes her down again, their eyes locking, and kisses her so fervently that she melts into it, her spine dissolving beneath his fingertips. He’s taking advantage of her great weakness — him. Proving a point, she thinks dimly, and then she isn't thinking anymore. His body weight is so warm, so whole, above her; she's burning, her body incandescent, a vessel of pure flame. She grips his tied back hair, slides her mouth against his stubble. He reaches down to touch her with a rare smile — not arrogant or assuming, but a smile of pure happiness, a smile she hasn’t witnessed since their college days — and she comes so hard that she screams, muffling the sound with one hand.
He laughs again, kissing her neck, her cheek, her mouth. "That bad, huh?”
She runs her fingers across his face, tracing the contours. He's gorgeous, that much is easy to admit. "You're an idiot.”
He grasps her hand, kissing her fingertips. "Ah, yes. I look forward to your next insult.”
She doesn't know why she's permitted to have him. She is tainted in all the ways that he is not. He's ineffable, collected, smooth. Life bounces off him and lands on her. And yet.
Kaji nudges her nose with his. ”Going quiet on me, Katsuragi?”
She smiles, runs her hand down the hard, muscular length of his torso. "If it were up to me…"
"If what were up to you?”
"Nothing." She kisses him, hot and open, and loses herself again as he sucks and licks at her mouth. Lovers on this side of Tokyo-3. She’s never counted herself among them, but he has changed things for her already. “Round two? Or have you gone soft on me?”
His grin is an answer in itself. ”Wanna check?”
He leaves this part out.
The dirt beneath his fingernails. The black marks on the knees of his pants. The swelling fruit, stippled in different shades of green. Dark forest green. Pale underbelly green. The smooth hard shell, the tantalizing red flesh. The pulpy seeds.
She doesn't love him, not really. She'll make no effort to understand this part of him.
Sometimes he cannot reconcile the memory of her with this captain thing. Where is the girl who kissed his face and hands over and over until he was panting and laughing? Maybe I am completely different, her voice echoes. Still girlish, but with a depth of sadness or knowledge or both.
She works to keep Tokyo-3 from annihilation, and there is little else beyond that. To her, the cultivation of new life is an exercise in futility. There are few plants that grow in the chemical-laden soil now.
That little kid — Misato’s ward — came once, and knelt by the melons. Blinked up at the sky. Touched the rough, corded stems. Seemed to understand.
He finds it funny. Sad too. A scrawny little kid like that, understanding.
Misato used to cook for him. She wouldn’t have minded had he brought a watermelon home. He can see her now: hands on her hips, squinting at him with that half-annoyed, half-loving look, reaching for a knife to dice the fruit. Letting him lick the juice from her fingers and mouth.
Ah, maybe she would make the effort.
He never gets the chance to ask, anyway.
Take care of yourself, Katsuragi.
He’d smiled, and left her. It had struck her, in that precise, infallible, terrible moment, how beautiful he looked in egress. Still unshaven, dark hair tumbling across his brow. She's left clutching the fabric.
No, she isn't capable of screaming anymore.
You were supposed to take care of me — don’t leave me — oh god, I — it doesn’t matter now — you would say it matters anyway, but I don’t care, I don’t want you to die, I need you — I love you.
Flashes.
A neon moon. His boxers on her floor. “Put your fingers in my mouth,” she’d said.
A voicemail. And say those words I could not say eight years ago.
A kiss, the first kiss. Like someone had frightened away the birds in her heart, set them aflutter. Set her ablaze.
His voice: low, threaded with longing. “I like hanging out with you, Captain,” he had said one night as they lay together, poring over a set of ciphers, the last word softly mocking but the rest too sincere. He’d tugged at her hair, then folded it over and over in his hands until it shone like silk. In a moment of softness, she’d rolled over onto him and kissed his mouth. “I like you, Kaji,” she had whispered, as if there were people around to overhear. His smile was reward enough; then they were tangled in the bed again.
She knows she won’t live much longer without him. This is only clear in his absence.
It comes. The blackness, the pain. When she knows she is dying but all she can see is him. The sparkling light grows steadier, a scattering of silver glass across the water, brilliant gold motes texturing the wet sand. He is there, with that rare smile, gazing down at her as if they’ve finally landed.
Stick the landing. They might have made it across this section of sky.
“Kaji-kun,” she murmurs. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?”
Misato, he says with aching gentleness. Tell the truth.